"Cliff Notes - Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, A" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

believe in. The artistic and intellectual world beyond Ireland
beckons to him. Like the mythic Greek hero, Daedalus, whose name
Stephen's recalls, Stephen Dedalus seeks to fly from the forces that
have entrapped him. Will he fail or will he succeed? It is not
clear. But he is ready to sail to the continent, there to begin a
new life as a writer.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man contains a large cast of
characters. But the central figure, Stephen Dedalus, is by far the
most important. Of the others, only two play major roles throughout
the novel--Stephen's father, Simon, and his mother, May.

^^^^^^^^^^
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN: STEPHEN DEDALUS

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is above all a portrait of
Stephen Dedalus. It is through Stephen that you see his world, and
it is his development from sensitive child to rebellious young man
that forms the plot of the novel.

There are many Stephens, often contradictory. He is fearful yet
bold, insecure yet proud, lonely and at the same time afraid of love.
One Stephen is a romantic who daydreams of swashbuckling heroes and
virginal heroines. The other is a realist at home on Dublin's most
sordid streets. One Stephen is too shy to kiss the young lady he
yearns for. The other readily turns to prostitutes to satisfy his
sexual urges. One is a timid outsider bullied by his classmates.
The other is courageous enough to confront and question authority.
One devoutly hopes to become a priest. The other cynically rejects
religion.

Stephen loves his mother, yet eventually hurts her by rejecting her
Catholic faith. Taught to revere his father, he can't help but see
that Simon Dedalus is a drunken failure. Unhappy as a perpetual
outsider, he lacks the warmth to engage in true friendship. "Have
you never loved anyone?" his fellow student, Cranly, asks him. "I
tried to love God," Stephen replies. "It seems now I failed."

The force that eventually unites these contradictory Stephens is his
overwhelming desire to become an artist, to create. At the novel's
opening you see him as an infant artist who sings "his song."
Eventually you'll see him expand that song into poetry and theories
of art. At the book's end he has made art his religion, and he
abandons family, Catholicism, and country to worship it.

The name Joyce gave his hero underscores this aspect of his
character. His first name comes from St. Stephen, the first
Christian martyr; many readers have seen Stephen as a martyr to his
art. His last name comes from the great inventor of Greek myth,
Daedalus, whose mazes and waxen wings are the kind of splendid